Breakfast in Byrnesville

The boy moves along past two small storage sheds and up a narrow path to the boney dump. If he keeps to the path he won't get wet. At the top of the boney dump he continues beyond an old prickly tree of hard green apples and up through rows of dark green almost black pine trees. A high yellow meadow divides the pines from the edge of the woods at the top of the mountain. The boy walks to a place where he can see forever, his sneakers are wet. He looks back down the hill at the roof of the hotel and tries to spy his grandparent's house; he looks down into the valley and sees the railroad tracks and creek leading to Barnesboro.

The boy looks across the valley and at the back of the houses facing Philadelphia Avenue. He turns in a two hundred and seventy degree arc and scans the wavy horizon of hills in every direction; he inspects the familiar unfamiliar onion and rocket shapes of the church steeples and domes which reflect the sun as they stretch above the trees. With his eyes squinted for distance the boy follows the deep swath of woods cut for electrical lines leading up and over the side of the hill which holds the Barnesboro Pool.

Bouncing a bit down the hill the boy walks to the west along the alley and stops behind and above the old hotel which has been converted to apartments. He looks through the strong limbs of a great oak tree which guards and shades the whole yard behind the hotel. He climbs the tree and listens for sounds in the hotel. One of his good friends, Tom Marshall, lives in the hotel and after breakfast he will go and knock on his door. Out of the corner of his eye, a movement, and there is his grandma waving him in for breakfast, she is smiling, holding the screen door at the back of the house.